The Estée Lauder Cos. Inc. has made a decisive move and upped the ante in its beauty industry merger and acquisition contest by acquiring the Too Faced makeup brand for $1.45 billion, the largest purchase in Lauder’s 70-year history.

The history of red lipstick is a winding tale of power, death, rebellion, and bawdiness. Some smeared it on despite the stigma, while others literally poisoned themselves with toxic lipstick formulas in order to look beautiful. Powerful women used it to assert their space, and others used it to build courage and flirt with the idea of coming out of their boxes.

How does Glossier, in the course of two years, go from launch to being talked about as the beauty brand that possibly defines a generation? The skincare and makeup brand is expected to grow 600 percent in 2016, rising so fast that the company has re-forecasted its revenue goals twice this year.

This week, indie makeup brand ColourPop launched a limited-edition collection with Hello Kitty. As you would expect from the world’s cutest anthropomorphic cat and the internet’s buzziest makeup brand (3.5 million Instagram followers), it’s already selling out. Laura Nelson, the president and co-founder, assured me at a launch event that products would be restocked continually. Read more at Racked.

When it comes to unwanted, unregulated chemicals found in so many beauty products, 2016 has been the year of revolt: The Senate held its first hearing on a proposed law to improve cosmetics regulation, and sales of organic beauty products continue to climb. Now a survey has found that more than half of women over 35 — and a whopping 73 percent of millennial women — believe it’s important to buy all-natural cosmetics. Read more at Yahoo Beauty.

Gwyneth Paltrow, the Oscar-winning actress turned online lifestyle guru, is in a familiar environ: the promo junket. Except the project she’s hocking today isn’t a new feature film; it’s Goop’s first-ever fragrance, simply called Edition 01 Winter. My first question: What is more grueling, forging a career in Hollywood or an online business in the tech world? Read more at Vanity Fair.

There's a quiet love affair brewing between the beauty industry and the world of sci-fi. We saw it this season at the Chanel runway show, where models walked through a server room accompanied by Robo Coco robots. There was also the alien-like glittery shapes tattooed on the models' faces at Giamba. Read more at Harper's Bazaar.

Fresh off the heels of CoverGirl's groundbreaking announcement of makeup artist James Charles as its first male spokesmodel—a huge win for gender inclusivity—the brand is giving us yet another YAS-worthy appointment. The brand's latest beauty ambassador is makeup artist Nura Afia, a Muslim beauty vlogger known for her makeup tutorials. Read more at Glamour.

In March 2016, Milk Makeup launched in 50 Sephora stores in the US with dedicated, six-foot gondolas and a “rager” featuring musical performances by Salt-N-Pepa and Santigold. It was an audacious beginning for an upstart company, whose founders had little experience in the cosmetics industry. Milk Makeup is the latest venture hatched by Milk Studios, the photo studio-cum-creative agency that sold another concept, MADE Fashion Week, to WME-IMG in 2015. Read more at Business of Fashion.

Beauty entrepreneur Jennifer Walsh has been a veteran in the retail and beauty space for almost two decades. As the creator of the Beauty Bar, a revolutionary retail concept which spanned brick and mortar stores, e-commerce and also included a weekly TV program, Walsh helped create, market, and launch some of the most popular beauty brands in the U.S. and overseas. Read more at Forbes.

The “skin-care collab” is officially a thing. Cleansers, creams, and even skin gadgets are coming from all corners of the celebrity hemisphere: Tyra Banks, Robin McGraw (you may know her as Dr. Phil’s wife), and, of all people, Smokey Robinson (yes, the Motown singer-songwriter famous for “My Girl,” “Cruisin’,” and “I Second That Emotion”). Read more at Allure.

There are reasons why the hair and beauty sector has, up until now, been behind the curve in terms of attracting investment. One possible reason is the gender imbalance that tends afflict the VC industry. “It is a badly understood market, not least because most VCs are males.” Read more at Forbes.